In the midst of those hours set apart for sleep and constituting the
night of the Vril-ya, I was awakened from the disturbed slumber into
which I had not long fallen, by a hand on my shoulder. I started and
beheld Zee standing beside me. “Hush,” she said in a whisper; “let no
one hear us. Dost thou think that I have ceased to watch over thy safety
because I could not win thy love? I have seen Taee. He has not prevailed
with his father, who had meanwhile conferred with the three sages who,
in doubtful matters, he takes into council, and by their advice he has
ordained thee to perish when the world re-awakens to life. I will save
thee. Rise and dress.”
Zee pointed to a table by the couch on which I saw the clothes I had
worn on quitting the upper world, and which I had exchanged subsequently
for the more picturesque garments of the Vril-ya. The young Gy then
moved towards the casement and stepped into the balcony, while hastily
and wonderingly I donned my own habiliments. When I joined her on the
balcony, her face was pale and rigid. Taking me by the hand, she said
softly, “See how brightly the art of the Vril-ya has lighted up the
world in which they dwell. To-morrow the world will be dark to me.” She
drew me back into the room without waiting for my answer, thence into
the corridor, from which we descended into the hall. We passed into the
deserted streets and along the broad upward road which wound beneath the
rocks. Here, where there is neither day nor night, the Silent Hours
are unutterably solemn--the vast space illumined by mortal skill is
so wholly without the sight and stir of mortal life. Soft as were
our footsteps, their sounds vexed the ear, as out of harmony with the
universal repose. I was aware in my own mind, though Zee said it not,
that she had decided to assist my return to the upper world, and that
we were bound towards the place from which I had descended. Her silence
infected me and commanded mine. And now we approached the chasm. It had
been re-opened; not presenting, indeed, the same aspect as when I had
emerged from it, but through that closed wall of rock before which I
had last stood with Taee, a new clift had been riven, and along its
blackened sides still glimmered sparks and smouldered embers. My
upward gaze could not, however, penetrate more than a few feet into the
darkness of the hollow void, and I stood dismayed, and wondering how
that grim ascent was to be made.
Zee divined my doubt. “Fear not,” said she, with a faint smile; “your
return is assured. I began this work when the Silent Hours commenced,
and all else were asleep; believe that I did not paused till the path
back into thy world was clear. I shall be with thee a little while yet.
We do not part until thou sayest, ‘Go, for I need thee no more.’”
My heart smote me with remorse at these words. “Ah!” I exclaimed, “would
that thou wert of my race or I of thine, then I should never say, ‘I
need thee no more.’”
“I bless thee for those words, and I shall remember them when thou art
gone,” answered the Gy, tenderly.
During this brief interchange of words, Zee had turned away from me, her
form bent and her head bowed over her breast. Now, she rose to the full
height of her grand stature, and stood fronting me. While she had been
thus averted from my gaze, she had lighted up the circlet that she wore
round her brow, so that it blazed as if it were a crown of stars. Not
only her face and her form, but the atmosphere around, were illumined by
the effulgence of the diadem.
“Now,” said she, “put thine arm around me for the first and last time.
Nay, thus; courage, and cling firm.”
As she spoke her form dilated, the vast wings expanded. Clinging to her,
I was borne aloft through the terrible chasm. The starry light from her
forehead shot around and before us through the darkness. Brightly and
steadfastly, and swiftly as an angel may soar heavenward with the soul
it rescues from the grave, went the flight of the Gy, till I heard
in the distance the hum of human voices, the sounds of human toil. We
halted on the flooring of one of the galleries of the mine, and beyond,
in the vista, burned the dim, feeble lamps of the miners. Then I
released my hold. The Gy kissed me on my forehead, passionately, but as
with a mother’s passion, and said, as the tears gushed from her eyes,
“Farewell for ever. Thou wilt not let me go into thy world--thou canst
never return to mine. Ere our household shake off slumber, the rocks
will have again closed over the chasm not to be re-opened by me, nor
perhaps by others, for ages yet unguessed. Think of me sometimes, and
with kindness. When I reach the life that lies beyond this speck in
time, I shall look round for thee. Even there, the world consigned to
thyself and thy people may have rocks and gulfs which divide it from
that in which I rejoin those of my race that have gone before, and I may
be powerless to cleave way to regain thee as I have cloven way to lose.”
Her voice ceased. I heard the swan-like sough of her wings, and saw the
rays of her starry diadem receding far and farther through the gloom.
I sate myself down for some time, musing sorrowfully; then I rose and
took my way with slow footsteps towards the place in which I heard the
sounds of men. The miners I encountered were strange to me, of another
nation than my own. They turned to look at me with some surprise, but
finding that I could not answer their brief questions in their own
language, they returned to their work and suffered me to pass on
unmolested. In fine, I regained the mouth of the mine, little troubled
by other interrogatories;--save those of a friendly official to whom I
was known, and luckily he was too busy to talk much with me. I took care
not to return to my former lodging, but hastened that very day to quit
a neighbourhood where I could not long have escaped inquiries to which
I could have given no satisfactory answers. I regained in safety my own
country, in which I have been long peacefully settled, and engaged in
practical business, till I retired on a competent fortune, three years
ago. I have been little invited and little tempted to talk of the
rovings and adventures of my youth. Somewhat disappointed, as most men
are, in matters connected with household love and domestic life, I often
think of the young Gy as I sit alone at night, and wonder how I could
have rejected such a love, no matter what dangers attended it, or by
what conditions it was restricted. Only, the more I think of a people
calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed
uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes
of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes
antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances,--the more
devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into
sunlight our inevitable destroyers. Being, however, frankly told by
my physician that I am afflicted by a complaint which, though it gives
little pain and no perceptible notice of its encroachments, may at any
moment be fatal, I have thought it my duty to my fellow-men to place on
record these forewarnings of The Coming Race.